About Tom Kerr
Tom Kerr had a wide variety of “hands on” experiences growing up, including building crystal radios, car model kits, airbrush painting, honorable mention in a Fisher Body model car building contest at age 13, voted 8th grade “Most Artistic”, built tree houses, bicycles, motorized bicycles, go-carts, learned drafting starting in the 9th grade, built his own cars from parts, rebuilt engines, residential home construction, concrete form carpenter on the Washington DC Metro Subway, studyied fine art and technical art in college, architectural design and construction of historic home addition, built grandfather clocks and fine furniture, and finally, guitar construction. Anything having to do with “hands on” creativity attracted Tom’s interest.
Tom was introduced to guitar building in the summer of 1978 while he was a Graduate Assistant at Western Kentucky University when the National Endowment for the Arts funded a 4 week guitar building workshop. The workshop featured guest Luthier Mr. Hascal Haile (who had developed a reputation by building guitars for Chet Atkins and many other famous musicians) and was directed by Tom’s mentor and friend Dr. Frank Pittman, Industrial Technology professor of Wood Technology.
Dr. Pittman lived with Mr. Haile during a 6 week sabbatical to learn guitar building and brought these skills back to WKU. Tom was fortunate to have worked with Dr. Pittman for 2 years as both a Student and Graduate Assistant and learned many fine furniture and classical guitar construction techniques over this active building period. During this time, Mr. Haile visited on occasion and provided critiques on subsequent Kerr guitars.
After graduating from WKU with a BS in Industrial Technology and a Masters of Education, Tom worked in an Antique Reproduction furniture shop for 6 months that specialized in cherry wood furniture. This experience offered small scale mass production experience, both how, and how NOT, to do things. Tom started working in the professional engineering and construction world for the next many years until he resumed guitar building in 2006 when his son, Sam, started taking guitar lessons and renewed Tom's interest in guitar building.
About the guitars
The current Kerr Guitar design evolved from the Haile/Pittman method, which itself was originally based on the Hauser style of guitar building. The current construction design has evolved further over the past few years through interaction with many classical guitar players from around the world, guitar playing teachers, and “hands on” review of other high quality guitars. Tom is most thankful to all those unnamed contributors in the never ending refinement of his guitar design.
Common features include Spanish style side to neck joinery, fan strut solid tops and quality woods such as Euro/German Spruce tops, East Indian Rosewood sides/backs, and Ebony fret boards. ustom features, including inlay, neck shape, width and scale can be customized to fit a player’s individual preferences.